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July 10, 2003 |
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I love eBooks!.
The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: "I don't intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God." "Don't you think God knows the facts?" Bethe asked. "Yes," said Szilard. "He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts."
-Hans Christian von Baeyer, Taming the Atom I love eBooks, even if they're Microsoft eBooks, which they're now giving away as a promotion:
Every week during the summer, Microsoft will release three new eBooks as a free download - in addition, a new version of Microsoft Reader with enhanced security is now available.
This week Microsoft begins a 20-week promotion on Microsoft Reader eBooks, designed for the summer vacation season. Every week, three new books will be released as a free download, totalling sixty titles in all. Participating writers include Bill Bryson and Amy Tan.
These new titles accompany a new version of Microsoft Reader, with enhanced security and what Microsoft claim is a simpler installation and activation process. This version is required to participate in the promotion.
The growing catalogue of Reader eBooks now totals more than 20,000, and Microsoft intend to publicise this further with the help of Fictionwise, a leading eBook retailer, in a joint weekly newsletter. I don't have any sort of Microsoft handheld device, so I'm stuck reading the books on my laptop, but this is still pretty cool. I just downloaed Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" from which that top quote was taken from (retyped of course, since you can't copy/paste from a close eBook.) It'll be fun to go through it - too bad my machine's not a tablet!
I think I prefer Adobe's eBook reader more, but M$'s attempt isn't bad. Too bad there's not a hack to get these books on my Symbian phone. Hey - I'll *pay* for the books. I don't care, just get them onto a non-Microsoft device. (Look at this paragraph. Adobe and Microsoft. Sheeesh. It's like picking from the 7th or 8th level of Hell.)
Oh well, free eBooks! I really need to do a summary of the eBook sites I've found. I'd *love it* if I never had to flip a page again to read a novel or technical book again in my life.
-Russ
Comment [Russell Beattie Notebook]
3:42:49 PM 
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| Just the Beginning of Mobile Piracy.
  
I read about this last week, and Joi's got a good post about it:
Camera phone book theft banned in Japanese bookstores
People are using digital cameras and camera phones in Japan to photograph pages of magazines and books instead of buying them.
Starting on Tuesday, bookstores across the nation will put up posters urging magazine readers to "refrain from recording information with camera-mounted cellphones and other devices".
I know several people who use digital cameras as document storage devices. Just yesterday, I saw a very cool camera mount for taking pictures of documents with your digital camera. In the context of copyright, there are some very interesting issues here that tie into the whole area of photography copyright.
via imajes via #joiito bot blog This of course is just the beginning. The images above are taken directly from #mobitopia regular Clarity's moblog. So okay, nothing too special right? Well, you can *see* them right? If he wanted, I'm sure that he could've taken a few video clips as well. 10 second video clips aren't anything special either, I'll give you that, but it's the beginning. I'm sure there's someone in Hollywood who doesn't even like the fact that these blurry photos are out there already. They're going to have kittens when the *real* phones start coming.
Again, right now the 3650 just shows what's possible. Combine the Symbian OS with a 1.3 Megapixel camera and a 512MB SD card in future phones and suddenly you have a video pirate's paradise. Not too great quality for watching on your TV? No problem, they can get shared around to be watched on the way to work (or in the corner of your screen *at* work. ;-) ). Or something else.
The future is coming quickly... I don't know if copyrights can keep up.
-Russ
Comment [Russell Beattie Notebook]
9:03:54 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Michael Girard.
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Shoot the Stars
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